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Sunday, April 20, 2003

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

To sample the flavor of Martins Ferry, Ohio, you could stop by Dutch Henry's on Hanover Street for a few Pabst Blue Ribbons and karaoke.

	This week's Book Reviews 'Leap of Faith Memoirs of an Unexpected Life' 'A Ship Made of Paper' 'The Angel's Command' 'A Look Over My Shoulder' 'The Growing Seasons'

Or, you could attend the annual James Wright Poetry Festival held last weekend just a block away at the public library.

Unless you enjoy bad country songs (Dixie Chicks excluded these days) sung very badly through a cigarette haze, I would recommend the poetry festival.

It's not that Henry's lacks that certain -- how shall I say it? -- Upper Ohio Valley cachet, but its noise level makes poetry discussions a little touch and go.

Then when you throw in a rather casual wedding reception as was the case the night of April 12, there are simply too many distractions to allow for serious literary analysis.

For instance, the happy couple's festively decorated pickup truck was parked outside poised for the honeymoon journey, which, the groom told me, was to be a short one to their home. (No, I didn't ask if it had wheels, too.)

OK, I admit that the bar and the festival are at opposite sides of the cultural spectrum.

They do, however, capture in many ways the currents of life that have flowed through industrial river towns, Pittsburgh included, which Wright so instinctively caught in his poetry.

His death at 52 in 1980 prompted a group of people in his hometown to organize a celebration in his honor a year later and the festival has been going ever since.

The parade of poets that has made its way to the little town upstream from Wheeling, W.Va., is a roll call of American greats, some well-known, others with fine local reputations, but all part of a community of writers to which this festival pays tribute.

Wright, son of a working family struggling in the Depression, was expected to play high school football, get a job at Wheeling Steel and stop for a shot and beer after work at Dutch Henry's.

As happens so often, fate, in the person of an inspiring teacher at Shreve High School, intervened and sent him on his way to college, studies in Europe and the writing of a varied, scholarly and fine collection of poetry.

But, Wright never forgot Martins Ferry in his respect and love for the people who stayed on. He recognized their dignity, strength and value as being as valuable as the work of Horace, the classical poet he admired, and as worthy of poetry.

Holding the festival named for him in his hometown perpetuates the discussion of that combination of the scholarly and real life.

There, you can hear the wide-ranging intelligence of poet Michael Harper as he moves from Keats to Coltrane, then have dinner at the First Presbyterian Church basement.

Harper was joined this year by Irene McKinney, state poet of West Virginia whose work, read in her Mountaineer dialect, honors the people of her region as strongly as Wright did.

Like many poets of his generation, Harper, 65, knew Wright and continues to admire him, not only for his writing skills, but also for his intellectual rigor.

This was a Martins Ferry guy who knew how to cross-body block as well as how to write a sonnet with classical references.

The 23rd annual festival, a two-day event, ended late April 12 with a superb reading by Harper, which even a few karaoke rounds could not dispel.

All was not inspirational in Martins Ferry, however.

Those of you who have seen the signs at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh warning of state budget cuts would feel at home in the Ohio library where similar posters tell of even more devastating reductions in the Buckeye State.

Where the Rendell plan calls for 50 percent slashes to commonwealth libraries, Ohio seems to be facing a complete wipeout of state funds.

While the lawmakers huddle in Harrisburg and Columbus over spending bills, we should do more than just hold our breaths.

Letters, phone calls and e-mails to our elected representatives supporting libraries are in order.

The Carnegie Library is planning long-needed improvements, paid largely by a bond issue, but state cutbacks could be disastrous to an essential institution which is trying to stay vital.

Watching the smoke from Iraq's sacked libraries might make it easy to view them as secondary to more important and better guarded aspects of society, like oil wells, but of course, they are not.

The local library embodies our progress as a society. Shortchange it and we pay the price down the road.

Obviously, the crisis facing libraries all over the country these days is nothing like the destruction in Iraq, but it is a crisis of serious consequences nevertheless.

The question is, Will we agree to pay more taxes to give libraries the money they need?

Show me a politician who will run on that pledge and I'll buy you a beer at Dutch Henry's. Maybe even two.